


Suzi and the Night Man

by HiNerdsItsCat (HiLarpItsCat)



Series: Two Can Play At That Game [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Identities, Attempted Kidnapping, Chameleon Arch (Doctor Who), Doctor Who Series 12 Spoilers, Doctor Who Spoilers, F/M, Feral Bastards Being Feral, Gen, Jenny Smith/Harry Jones - Timeline B, Kid Fic, Memory Alteration, Other, POV Child, Parenthood, Spoilers for Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Telepathic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24026617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiLarpItsCat/pseuds/HiNerdsItsCat
Summary: (Timeline B)It took Suzi Smith-Jones until her sixth birthday to realise that her family was not like other families: because, even though she knew some children who had more than two parents, no other child she knew had two sets of parents that lookedexactly alike.Something would come from the sky or the sea or the ground, or people would start disappearing or acting weird, or things would just feelwrongin a way that Suzi couldn’t explain in words, and then her mum and dad would vanish and two other people would take their places: the Storm Lady and the Night Man.And one day, the Night Man had told her, they were going to take her to see the stars.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: Two Can Play At That Game [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1733089
Comments: 44
Kudos: 137





	Suzi and the Night Man

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in the "Timeline B" version of the ending to _Two Can Play At That Game:_ where the Doctor and the Master use the Chameleon Arch to turn themselves back into Jenny Smith and Harry Jones and live the rest of their lives together as humans.

It took Suzi Smith-Jones until her sixth birthday to realise that her family was not like other families.

Not because other families seemed to have lots of other relations and all Suzi had was a mum and a dad and a little brother (and her nan and grandad, but she knew that they weren’t _actually_ her father’s parents), or because neither of her parents seemed to have any stories of where they grew up, or because Suzi and Ian had both started talking really young and Suzi made all of her teachers very nervous…

She thought that her family was normal for so long because she knew about other children who had more than two parents.

But she eventually realised that no other child she knew had two sets of parents that looked _exactly alike._

By the time she was six, Suzi had met her _other_ parents at least half a dozen times that she could remember, and almost every time it was because something really bad had happened.

Something would come from the sky or the sea or the ground, or people would start disappearing or acting weird, or things would just feel _wrong_ in a way that Suzi couldn’t explain in words, and then her mum and dad would vanish and two other people would take their places.

She met the Night Man first: the one who looked like her dad in every way except in his eyes and the way that he moved, like he was hunting something and was just waiting to get close enough to jump on it. She called him the Night Man (only in her head, because who would she ever talk to about him?) because something about him made her think of what a monster under the bed might be like: something scary that only appeared when the lights were off.

The first time (that she could remember), she was almost three and saw him walking by her grandparents’ house, where she had been staying for the weekend. When Suzi ran out to see him, though, she stopped suddenly and felt like she was stuck to the ground with glue. 

He knelt next to her and stared at her like she was a stranger, looking her over rapidly, almost frantically.

He wasn’t her dad. She knew that from the moment she looked him in the eyes. “Are Mummy and Daddy okay?” she asked.

The Night Man froze, but then nodded. “They’ll be back for you soon. Until then, stay here.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

His mouth twitched into something that wasn’t exactly a smile but looked a little like one. He leaned in close so that he could whisper in her ear. “When you are old enough,” the Night Man said, “we’re going to take you to see the stars.”

He stood up and left.

The next morning, her parents came to take her home. They never mentioned the other man, the one who looked like her dad, so she wondered if she had only imagined it. Either way, she decided not to ask about him.

* * *

Suzi didn’t meet the Storm Lady until a year or so later, one night when there were a lot of bright lights outside, lighting up the neighbourhood until the shadows were gone. 

“Go watch over your brother,” her mum told her, and then ran downstairs and out into the back garden.

Ian was still a baby and was also asleep, so it wasn’t like there was anything for Suzi to do other than sit there. She peeked out the window overlooking the front of the house, where the street was packed with people made of light. 

And then someone left Suzi’s house, someone who was wearing her mum’s clothes and had the same hair and face… but she wasn’t Suzi’s mum.

She met the glowing figures face to face (except that they didn't _have_ faces) and then… she started talking.

Just talking.

But it was like a storm—Suzi could feel it all around her, the same way that she could feel the rain coming before the first drops fell. She could see the way that the people made of light listened, and shivered, and then they vanished into nothing at all.

The only person left was the Storm Lady, who turned and stared up at Suzi’s window with eyes that were looking _inside_ of her, and an expression that gave her the weird feeling like she didn’t really know who Suzi was. Then the Storm Lady nodded and went back inside the house.

Her mum came back an hour or so later and put Suzi back to bed. And like with the Night Man, they never talked about the Storm Lady.

Suzi wasn’t exactly _afraid_ of either of them, even though they were definitely scary, because she got the sense that they were always on her side.

They were what the monsters under the bed were afraid of.

* * *

That didn’t mean that Suzi wasn’t scared when they were around, even if her fear wasn’t of _them_ in particular.

Shortly after Suzi turned six, the person who she thought was their next-door neighbour, Mrs Leiden, grabbed her by the hand and dragged her to an empty house with a huge cellar. Then, to Suzi’s horror, Mrs Leiden turned into some kind of red blob person, which was when Suzi noticed the real Mrs Leiden nearby, tied up and not awake. And that was also when Suzi listened to what the blob people were saying and realised that they were going to disguise one of them as Suzi herself and do something awful.

But they hadn’t tied her up very well, which meant that after only a few minutes of squirming around, Suzi was able to wriggle out of the ropes and run for the door. One of the blob people got in her way, so she ran off in a different direction and hid behind some big metal boxes, trying to breathe really quietly.

Not quietly enough, though, because she heard footsteps getting closer and then stopping right in front of the box she was hiding behind.

The face that peeked over it looked just like her father’s, except in the eyes.

The Night Man held out what Suzi recognised as the noisy screwdriver thing that her mum had, and pointed it at the box until it made a quiet unlocking sound. “Get inside,” he ordered her, taking her by the arm and helping her climb into the box.

“They’re aliens,” she told him.

He gave her that weird almost-smile. “For the moment,” he said. “You might want to cover your ears.”

The Night Man put the lid on the box. Suzi heard the noisy screwdriver again and realised when she pushed on the lid that he had locked her in.

Annoyed, Suzi decided _not_ to cover her ears. Outside the box, she could hear the Night Man talking (closer to shouting, really) in a tone that was almost cheerful.

And then the screaming started.

At first she thought that it might be the Night Man who was screaming, but she quickly realised that he was laughing—more like giggling—over the sound of the screams and the dull thudding noises, which were all soon drowned out by the crackle of electricity. 

Even trapped inside the box, Suzi could smell it: that metallic tang that stung the inside of her nose, a more intense version of the way that her mum’s workroom smelled sometimes.

Eventually, the screaming and the crackling sounds faded, and the Night Man returned and let Suzi out of the box.

His dark eyes were glowing the way that the night sky glowed when it was full of stars.

 _(“When you are old enough,”_ he told her the first time they met, _“we’re going to take you to see the stars.”)_

He was also breathing heavily, smelled of metal and smoke, and was covered in drops of what Suzi realised was probably blood.

She didn’t _know_ if she was scared.

“Time to go home,” he said, leading her outside by the hand. Suzi noticed that his fingers were a bit sticky.

Outside, it was getting dark, and her mum was talking to the real Mrs Leiden. Right as a cab pulled up outside the house, Suzi’s mother placed her fingers on the side of Mrs Leiden’s forehead. The woman staggered a bit, but her mum caught her and helped her into the cab. 

Once it drove away, Suzi realised that the woman standing at the kerb wasn’t her mother at all, but the Storm Lady.

“Are you all right?” the Storm Lady asked her, examining Suzi hurriedly, before reaching into the Night Man’s pocket and taking the noisy screwdriver from him.

“She’s _fine,”_ he said, annoyed, but the Storm Lady pressed a button on the screwdriver and waved it up and down at Suzi like she was doing some kind of scan. “She’d already slipped her bonds and run off to hide by the time I showed up.”

The Storm Lady’s face widened in a grin that was sincere, but definitely not her mum’s smile. “Brilliant! Well done, Suzi: escaping a squad of Zygon scouts is no easy trick.”

But before Suzi could say anything, something changed in the Storm Lady’s expression and she looked back at the Night Man like he had done something awful. “Did she see—”

“No,” he interrupted. “I shoved her in a box so that she couldn’t.”

The Storm Lady’s expression didn’t change. “But she saw the aftermath.” She gestured at the specks of blood on his shirt.

For some reason, he grinned. “Did you really expect me to not have a _little_ fun?”

She looked ready to say something really nasty, but instead took a deep breath. “It’s time we went back,” the Storm Lady said, and lifted Suzi up in her arms.

It was _almost_ like being carried by her mother… but not quite.

“Could have taken a cab ourselves,” the Night Man muttered as they walked.

“Not with the state you’re in,” the Storm Lady replied. “They’d take one look at you and keep driving.”

“Half of them do that anyway,” he grumbled.

All of the things that had happened that day finally caught up with Suzi, and she felt herself beginning to doze off. With her head resting on the Storm Lady’s shoulder, she could hear the faint sound of a heart beating in a very strange rhythm.

It was definitely weird, but also oddly soothing.

After a few minutes of walking, Suzi heard something else: the slightly-echoing whisper of the Storm Lady. _“Contact.”_

The Night Man’s voice sounded the same way: _“Contact.”_

 _“That was too close,”_ she said.

 _“It was_ _fine_ _,”_ he protested, still in that odd whisper. _“Apparently the ability to escape capture at inconvenient times is hereditary.”_

 _“But they went after her specifically. After_ _us_ _. They must have suspected something.”_

 _“Could have been random chance,”_ he pointed out.

Somehow, the Storm Lady laughed without making a sound. _“I know you don’t believe that.”_

 _“So we move,”_ he suggested. _“Pick somewhere else to live. We’ve got a solid cover story.”_

Suzi tried not to fidget. She didn’t want to leave Leeds, but some part of her was curious about what else was out there.

 _“If we start running,”_ the Storm Lady said, _“we might never stop. They’d never have a normal life.”_

_“They’re never going to have a completely normal life as it is. Not if we have to keep coming back like this.”_

There was a long silence. Then the Storm Lady said angrily, _“You didn’t have to kill those scouts.”_

 _“Like you said, they weren’t here by chance. If I hadn’t killed them, they’d have gotten away, someone would have recognised one of us, and then every alien threat would be on our doorstep within a week.”_ He laughed in a way that did not sound very nice. _“Leaving is good. Never coming back is better.”_

_“There’s always another way.”_

_“There is, but you’re not so naive that you didn’t know what would happen when you sent me in there. Which is_ _why_ _you sent me in there: I do the things that you’re too scared to do yourself.”_

 _“It’s not fear,”_ she snapped.

_“It is, but you call it ‘rules’ instead. And you have so many of them…”_

_“We’re not going to argue about this now. Or possibly ever.”_ There was another long silence, and then she spoke again, even more angry than before. _“There might have still been humans in there, did you even think to check?”_

The Night Man didn’t sound all that bothered. _“You got that old lady out, didn’t you?”_

 _“With the_ _one trip_ _I was able to make before you burned it to a crisp! Can you be absolutely sure that she was the only one?”_

_“Does it matter?”_

“It was just her,” Suzi said, lifting her head from the Storm Lady’s shoulder.

She felt the Storm Lady’s arms stiffen around her. “What was that, Suzi?” she asked slowly.

“You were asking if there was anyone else in there who wasn’t an alien. There wasn’t.”

Suzi watched the two adults exchange a look that was a lot like the one that her parents made when she or Ian did something surprising. “You were listening to us?” the Storm Lady asked.

She wanted to say _duh,_ but she didn’t know either of them well enough to know if she would get in trouble for it (she certainly did with her grandparents). “Yes. It was just me and Mrs Leiden. There wasn’t anyone else.”

There was a weird pause, and then the Storm Lady said, “Thank you for telling us, Suzi.”

The rest of their walk home was in complete silence.

* * *

They took Suzi up to her bedroom, said goodnight, and then went downstairs.

After a few minutes, she could hear them talking, and so got out of bed and quietly crept to the top of the stairs so that she could listen.

“No transmissions,” the Storm Lady said, apparently using mum’s computer because Suzi could hear her tapping on the keyboard. “It’s possible that no one knows they were even here.”

“And if someone comes looking?” the Night Man asked.

“I’m leaving Jenny a note to contact UNIT. They’ve dealt with Zygons before; they’ll know what to do.”

“Fail miserably, you mean?”

The Storm Lady gave a brief laugh. “They certainly captured _you_ enough times over the years.”

“Where do you think Suzi got those escape artist skills from?” the Night Man said, snickering a little as well.

The Storm Lady stopped laughing. “She shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

“Escape?”

“Listen in on our telepathic link.” She sounded worried and Suzi didn’t understand why. “That’s… even Time Lords couldn’t eavesdrop like that.”

Suzi wondered what a ‘Time Lord’ was. It sounded kind of impressive in her opinion, like some kind of royalty or fairy tale character.

“Harry and Jenny were able to saunter right past the vault’s entire psychic security system without batting an eye,” the Night Man said. _He_ didn’t sound worried, at least. “It’s not surprising that their children would have similar abilities.”

“Maybe,” the Storm Lady conceded, “but it’s still… do you think she might be like us?” Now she sounded _really_ worried.

“She’s human. Jenny and Harry are human.”

“Amy and Rory were human too… but River ended up with Time Lord traits.”

“Because her parents shagged in a TARDIS. I’m _aware.”_

“She could sense time shifts, learn things incredibly quickly… even regenerate.” 

The Night Man scoffed. “Are you sure you didn’t marry her just to study her?”

That made Suzi sit up and pay attention. The Storm Lady married someone else? She had just assumed that the Storm Lady and the Night Man were married to each other, just like her parents were.

“Do you really think I would do that?” the Storm Lady asked angrily.

“Before we went back to the Arch, I showed you those memories of what Tecteun did to you,” he hissed. “Like mother, like daughter.”

The Storm Lady inhaled sharply. “How _dare you,”_ she spat.

A very tense silence followed. Suzi used the time to think over that latest piece of information. Her parents never talked about where they had grown up or who their own parents were. To have a _name,_ even a weird-sounding one, made Suzi’s head spin with the number of brand new questions she had.

The Storm Lady took a deep breath and Suzi could hear her voice shaking with fury. “As I was saying, there has never been any record of what happens when two Time Lords reproduce while transformed by an Arch—and, as you _alluded_ to just now, given my… origins… there’s no way of knowing how that would impact things.”

The Night Man’s reply sounded really mean: “Oh, yes, we mustn’t forget how _special_ you are—”

“This is not about you!”

“Of course, it’s _never_ about me, because the entire _universe_ has to revolve around you—”

“Because _you_ decided that it did!” The Storm Lady was almost shouting at him. “Because _you_ decided that feeling sorry for yourself was enough of a reason for an entire planet of people to—”

“I _told_ you why, I _told_ you that I couldn’t stop, I _told you_ how I feel about it now, but you keep throwing it in my face over and over—”

“Did you really think that I was just going to _ignore_ it? That I would suddenly be okay with it because you felt a little bit sorry for the first time in your life?”

Suzi wondered if she should go back to her room. Her parents argued pretty often, but they weren’t _angry_ at one another like this. It was awful hearing it in their voices, like they were trying to think of the worst possible things to say… 

“And yet you still decided to come with me,” the Night Man pointed out.

“Exactly! That is _exactly why_ I came with you!”

“What?” He sounded confused.

The Storm Lady growled in frustration. _“This_ is what we came here to escape. _This_ is what we came here to stop: all of the ways that our history together tore us apart and destroyed so many things around us… all of the ways that our pasts pulled us back into the dark. We _decided_ to run from all of that, so can we _please_ just—”

There was the sound of sudden movement and the Storm Lady stopped talking. Worried that something had happened, Suzi quietly moved down a few steps to get a look at them.

It turned out that they were just kissing, though not the way that Suzi’s parents did, where it seemed like they actually _liked_ one another. These two people still looked kind of upset, and the Storm Lady’s fingers were pressing so hard on the Night Man’s shoulders that Suzi wondered if she was hurting him, but he didn’t seem to notice.

Still: _yuck._

She crept back up to the top of the stairs.

After a few more gross noises, they must have finally stopped kissing, because the Night Man whispered, just loud enough for Suzi to hear, “This is why we came here too. For this. For each other.”

They didn’t sound angry anymore… just really tired.

“If they _are_ like us,” the Storm Lady said, “we’ll need to explain things to them.” 

“Maybe we could even go back to travelling for a bit. Take them along.”

There was a brief pause. “How long have you been thinking about this?” she asked, sounding a little suspicious.

“We each have a TARDIS. They’ve got one hell of an inheritance coming; they should know what it means.”

“Someday,” she sighed, “but not yet. Are you ready to head back?”

Suzi heard them kiss. _Gross._

“I can’t wait to see you again,” the Night Man said softly.

“Then let’s go.”

Suzi ran back to her room before they could pass by the stairs. She heard the sound of the back door opening and closing again.

She got into bed and stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling.

 _I might be an alien,_ she thought to herself. _One of those time royalty people._

Suzi couldn’t help grinning.

_That would be brilliant._

* * *

The next morning, everything was back to normal, but apparently Suzi wasn’t the only one who had been listening in on their conversation. She was playing outside with Ian when her brother asked out of nowhere: “Are Mummy and Daddy angry?”

“No,” she said, resuming her hunt for wherever the football had rolled under the bushes. “Why?”

“They were yelling at each other last night.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Suzi said, feeling uncomfortable. She hadn’t seen him at all, so how could he have heard them?

“I’m going to ask them,” he said, starting to walk back towards the house.

“Don’t,” Suzi said urgently, scrambling to her feet and grabbing him by the sleeve. “Don’t ask them.”

Ian scrunched up his nose. “Why not?”

“Because they _weren’t_ Mummy and Daddy. They look just like them, but they’re different people.”

His expression didn’t change. “Who were they, then?”

She looked around, making sure that no one was listening in. “They’re the Storm Lady and the Night Man,” she said quietly, “and if they ever come ‘round, you need to do exactly what they tell you.”

“Are they nice?” he asked nervously.

Suzi had to think about her answer for a second. “Sometimes. They’re also a little scary, but _we_ don’t need to be afraid of them, because they’re on our side. They’re the things that the monsters under the bed are scared of.”

Ian looked really impressed. Suzi couldn’t help feeling a little proud of herself for that. 

“And one day,” she said with a smile, “they’re going to take us to see the stars.”


End file.
